Buying in the UK

**Kawee** · March 09, 2010, 09:54 AM

Well...I'm planning to go study in the UK, and since I'll probably going to be there for at least three years, I will need a good desktop. However, everything is just so damn expensive there, especially in London where hopefully I will get to be.

I'm thinking about whether it'll actually be smarter to buy one in Thailand and ship it there. The cons are of course, the shipping fee and no warranty.

So, what I want to know is do computers in the UK get all sorts of taxes, which will make it very expensive?

**Freddie** · March 09, 2010, 10:11 AM

Nearly everything in the UK includes a tax called 'value added tax' better know as V.A.T or VAT which is charged at 17.5% above the retails mark up price. Most places will show the price including the VAT however a couple of places show it ex VAT probably so they get a high ranking on Google shopping so you have look out for that.

As for buying a PC I suggest you shop around, I was in Hong Kong 4 years ago and prices there weren't that much better then then UK prices just so long as you shop around and find the best prices. Places to look for a new PC would be Scan.com, Overclockers.co.uk, Yoyotech.co.uk these are all medium sized business and are trustworthy however you can still buy from places like Dell or HP but you can expect to pay a premium. Of course the best way to get the most from your cash is to build it yourself, the more you spending the more you save but anything less then £500 I would say your better of going to Dell.

**Kawee** · March 09, 2010, 11:32 AM

Cheers Freddie for such a prompt reply. I have roughly around 700 pounds as budget, but I could save up some more.

I'm too afraid to build my own computer to be honest. Never been much of a handyman.

I think sometime in August, a month before I leave for the UK, I may have to go around comparing prices. Cheers for the suggested websites. I'll use those to compare prices.

**Musthavename** · March 09, 2010, 01:34 PM

I can also second overclockers as a reliable site, albeit not from personal experience, but those of people I know. I tend to buy my parts from ebuyer.com myself, though I have no idea if the prebuilts they sell are any decent.

Don't be at all afraid about not knowing. It's not that difficult, it really isn't. There's lots of helpful tutorials out there on the net, lots of helpful people who will help you with your build, and motherboard manuals are probably the clearest manuals for any piece of kit going (they literally tell you everything you need to know to build it in one diagram). I can't recommend enough to build something yourself. The only reason to get a prebuilt is for low budget non-gaming machines. Otherwise, you'll save money by building it yourself.

**Kawee** · March 10, 2010, 11:15 AM

How much more expensive is it to buy prebuilt? For example, if I pay 700 pounds for a rebuilt, how much could I save building the computer myself? I might be tempted if it saves me a lot of money.

**Freddie** · March 10, 2010, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by Kawee

How much more expensive is it to buy prebuilt? For example, if I pay 700 pounds for a rebuilt, how much could I save building the computer myself? I might be tempted if it saves me a lot of money.

At £700 you can most likely save £40-£50 depending on how much shopping around you do if you do it yourself.

Take this pre built PC with Windows 7 64bit it comes in at just over £700 (when you click the link it says £630 odd but remember to add your Windows 7 licence!). The good thing about this PC is unlike PC's from big box shifters like HP and Dell this company actually uses proper enthusiasts components so no cheap PSU's or locked down OEM motherboards and a PC loaded and bogged down with crappy software running in the background.

edit

Now without actually doing any sort of shopping around and just building the same basic system (same CPU, motherboard, 4gb of ram) from the same site I ended up with a PC that costs just under £640 which is over £60 cheaper (so it was actually more savings then what I thought!) then the PC above and this PC had a much better video card Radeon HD5770 vs a Radeon HD4670 and the hard drive is twice as big as well and faster. What you do get with the PC above is a pre overclocked PC but this is something you can do yourself it's not hard and there are a ton of guides out there to help you so there is no point in paying a premium for a service which you can easily do yourself, but do bear in mind most games these days are video card bound rather then CPU bound hence why the video card I pick out gives my one a huge edge.

**Musthavename** · March 10, 2010, 01:25 PM

Thing is, prebuilts generally have substandard motherboards, or PSUs, or Graphics Cards, or all of those things. That, and there's a bit of a markup. On a £700 budget, i'd say you'd save yourself £100-ish and get yourself a slightly better machine by building it yourself, but don't rely too much on that figure. I've never been one for prebuilds myself.